"Poppa," I replied with emotion, "you will both be invaluable. I will bid you good-night. I believe the electric light burns all night long in the smoking-cabin, but that is not supposed to indicate that gentlemen are expected to stay there till dawn. I see you have two Havanas left. That will be quite enough for one evening. Good-night, poppa." CHAPTER III. All the way across momma implored me to become reconciled to Arthur. In extreme moments, when it was very choppy, she composed telegrams on lines which were to drive him wild with contrition without compromising my dignity; and when I suggested the difficulty of tampering with the Atlantic cable in mid-ocean without a diving machine, she wept, hinting that, if I were a true daughter of hers, things would never have come to such a pass. My position, from a filial point of view, was most trying. I could not deny my responsibility for momma's woes--she never left her cabin--yet I was powerless to put an end to them. Young women in novels have thrown themselves into the arms of the wrong man under far less parental pressure, but although it was indeed the hour the man was not available. Neither, such was the irony of circumstances, would our immediate union have affected the motion in the slightest degree. But although I presented these considerations to momma many times a day, she adhered so persistently to the idea of promoting a happy reunion that I was obliged to keep a very careful eye on the possibility of surreptitious messages from Liverpool. Once on dry land, however, momma saw her duty in another light. I might say that she swallowed her principles with the first meal she really enjoyed, after which she expressed her conviction that it was best to let the dead past bury its dead, so long as the obsequies did not necessitate her immediate return to America. I was looking forward immensely to observing the Senator in London, remembering the effect it had upon my own imagination, but on our arrival he conducted himself in a manner which can only be described as non-committal. He went about with his hands in his pockets, smoking large cigars with an air of reserved criticism that vastly impressed the waiters, acquiescing in strawberry jam for breakfast, for example, in a manner which said that, although this might be to him a new and complex custom, he was acquainted with Chicago ones much more recondite. His air was superior, but modestly so, and if he said nothing you would never suppose it was because he had nothing to say. He meant to give Great Britain a chance before he pronounced anything distinctly unfavourable even to her steaks, and in the meantime to remember what an up-to-date American owes to his country's reputation in the hotels of a foreign town.